Shallow

i am an empty bottle
but you have made me a drunk
falling over my own words
while smashing to the ground

parodies of love stories on television
if i give you eighteen kisses can i have them back,
later, when you’ve used them all up?

take me out dancing, take me to the sky,
there’s only so much sobriety i can stand
could you please fucking learn how to fly?

if this is a dance it’s a stupid one,
you and your lame left foot,
me and my inability to stay away from those
god-damn,
swaying,
gorgeous,
hips.

so take me down from the highest shelf,
dust me off, whisper a prayer,
and knock it back,
just like any other night.

lately, i have been hitting things.
i always wanted to be violent, a rebel
that kid who threw chairs in fifth grade
and was sent to the principal’s office every day.

but i was the quiet one, the knowing one,
the girl who talked to that boy and understood
why, why sometimes you need to throw things
and curse, and fight, and scream,
but never, never did.

it was there, though, under the skin, biting, itching
tearing at my internal organs, boiling out
black fluid collapsing my screams into sighs
soft words, compromise, getting it, getting it,
always god-damned getting it.

lately, i’ve been hitting things,
not seeing a real reason why, why not
why shouldn’t i swing, punch things, tear off my skin,
tell the world that i am
not
fucking
getting it.

and they get it.

let me speak vicious words
i could tear you apart
a cat, a game, a mouse:
but don’t be cliche, you were never so timid.

you can be the elephant, and i’ll be the circus
drag me through your dust and leave shit in your wake
yeah, i’m a little bit angry these days.

and it’s funny, because
i miss the feeling of your hair when you’re not around
and the stubble of your cheek,
your thoughtless half-assed glances.

or maybe i’m the bitch, swallowing dreams,
too ambitious for an artist, too apathetic for an artist
scribbling obscene words on the peace of our
sugar-coated oh-so understanding
conversations.

yes, i’m a little bit angry
that i don’t know yet how quite to scream
when every nerve inside me is rattled with energy:
did you take that from me, or did i never have it
in the first place?

i remember the thin veins of your fingers
stretched against time
pushing forward the days with hope.

“i could keep these clouds from raining!
i could perform upon the stage of this world!”

your dreams will bury you someday;
who will watch when you shatter your ankle
over an imagined ruined career.

but keep dancing, ballerina, and maybe
i’ll keep you from falling, ballerina.

it is not mine to explain the softness of my joints,
made pliable by indifference to others:
it is your concerns that make me bite my lip to bruising,
while the audience of our minds stand deliberate watch.

if they would stay out of this warm room, all would be fine,
but they persist in haunting the edges of my nightly bed,
eyes gleaming against their own silver blades.

i would be quick to dispatch of them,
if yours were not entertaining our guests with leers and lewd gestures,
and your mouth had not the same sense of careful shame that i reciprocate.

do others find the gentleness in your cheekbones,
or do the guardians stand too still and too steady upright?

i sometimes wish we could slip out in a secret passageway,
leaving them to hunt for us through sheets and dreams,
to where there are gentle trees to comfort and conceal:
but how could we ever leave ourselves behind?

though they have black smiles and loving hands,
there is little i can do now
but spread my legs and let them in.